Chapter 4: The Moon is a Perfect Mistress

Dinner for four in Jack’s cabin that night was a bit of a raucous affair with rum and wine and everyone more than a bit into their cups by the time the food was done and the table littered with crumbs, empty bottles, and empty glasses.That bread was incredible, Jack,” remarked Suzanna.

“Your new mate Woody, our cook, is part Portuguese on his mother’s side or something and…oh, wait a minute. I’ve had an idea.” Suzanna was always amazed at how Jack could go from sounding like a rather drunken and dangerous pirate to an excited 8-year-old boy and back again in the blink of an eye. Jack popped out of his seat to rummage through one of many chests in the room that always seemed to promise treasure. He returned from this small fishing expedition with a look of triumph in his eyes, and bowed to the ensemble with a grand flourish.

“Gentleman, miladies, after such a fine repast I thought you might care for a taste of something sweet,” and he brought to the table a bottle of Porto they’d taken off a fat Portuguese merchant ship several months before. While Jack was pouring, Will was just drunk enough that he growled into Elizabeth’s ear, “I know I would,” in something rather more than a stage whisper that they couldn’t help but overhear. And Elizabeth had had just enough wine that, while she flushed slightly, there was no reprimand. Instead she took up her glass and proposed a toast, “To the Black Pearl,” which they all echoed. Now Elizabeth had been raised with propriety in all things and she certainly knew that port was a drink to be sipped and savored. So they were all a bit stunned when she drained her glass and thumped it on the table, looking for all the world like, well, Jack drinking rum.

In a voice rather louder and slurpier then normal, Elizabeth exclaimed, “It’s been a lovely evening, Captain Sparrow, it really has, but I’m afraid Will and I are awfully tired and so we’re just going to head out.” Will offered an adorable and, it must be said, rather cocky pirate smile, and they were gone.

Suzanna smiled as well, looking at the closed door. “Was it something we said?” she joked.

“No, but I do believe that dear William has finally learned to recognize an opportune moment.”

They turned to look at each other, and the mood in the room went from playful to something very different in a heartbeat.

Because now they were both standing here alone.

In the middle of their own moment.

Jack looked at her with one of those smoldering gazes that made it very hard for her to breathe. Suzanna felt strings inside her begin to loosen and become undone and before she stopped breathing all together she managed to choke out, “I think I’d like some air,” but her face indicated that she was hoping he would join her. With Jack Sparrow smoothness, Jack recovered very quickly, gathered up the bottle and two goblets in his left hand, and placed his right on the small of Suzanna’s back to guide her out the door.

“Capital idea, milady. After dinner drinks on the terrace this evening.”

“The terrace?” she managed. She hoped she hadn’t actually squeaked. But she might have as so much of her attention was going to the heat spreading through her body and emanating from that hand. What the hell was the matter with her? She wanted him desperately, and she knew he was about to kiss her before she suggested coming outside. But a part of her was so scared. Scared it had been too long, scared he’d be disappointed and she’d be stuck here, and maybe most of all, scared she’d be disappointed and then there would really be nothing left to look forward to.

Jack brought them out to the very front of the ship. At their backs were a series of large wooden bins about 5 feet high and in front of them about 20 feet of open decking to the bow. Jack took that hand that had been on her back and swept it across in a grand gesture that seemed to say “we have arrived.”

“Hmmm...your terrace does seem a bit sparse on furnishings, Captain.” There. She could talk better when he wasn’t touching her.

“I know just the thing.” He took off his long vest, rolled it up into a well-padded square and plunked it on the deck. “Your furnishings, milady.”

“Am I sitting on that?”

“Actually, I recommend using it as a pillow if you want to get the best view.” And with that, he laid down right next to where he had placed it, and with some trepidation, she followed suit.

Stars. Brilliant white stars against a black dark as kohl, and so many of them that there were just no words. So they lay there in silence, neither moving for some time, drinking it all in, and thinking their own thoughts. Though it might be supposed that those thoughts intertwined.

After a time, the moon rose above the horizon—a full moon that turned the ocean into strands of silver and cast their faces into a study of light and dark.

“Tell me, what do you see when you look at the moon?” Jack asked quietly.

The question caught her off guard. There was a long silence and Jack was just wondering if she’d heard him when she answered. She was so lost in the timelessness of the stars, she didn’t hesitate to speak from her heart. “It’s not so much what I see when I look at the moon, but what I feel. Ever since I was little girl, I couldn’t sleep on the nights around the full moon. I had a huge yew tree outside my window that hung over the roof just outside my room, and I’d sneak out at night and sit in the tree looking at it and listening to the animals and the owls....It’s as if it taps into some pagan ancestral past they I don’t really know anything about, but I feel like I should be dancing somewhere in a forest glen with fairy lights all around. Does that sound quite mad?”

“Actually, I’d say it sounds rather brilliant. And very interesting. All the places I’ve been in the world, people see different things, so it seems to me that maybe people see in the moon what they need to find. You know, in Africa they say that the moon holds the voices of their ancestors, so they honor the moon and ask it for advice, and their ancestors speak to them. In places like Singapore in the East, they see a rabbit in the moon making rice cakes.” And Jack leaned over, fingers tracing in the sky to show her where to find the ears and the tail.

Suzanna was stunned because she’d been looking at the moon her whole life and now she could suddenly see a rabbit where she never had before. It was disorienting.

She was also disoriented because somewhere along the way when Jack started pointing things out with his left hand, his right had entwined itself with hers, and that feeling of heat was happening again, but it was on simmer just now, so she strained to listen to his words, which she really did want to hear. “I’m not sure about all that, except the ports I’ve been to in Asia are teeming with people and a lot of them look as if they hadn’t had enough to eat in a long time.

In England, they say there’s a man in the moon, which is the biggest load of codswallop I’ve ever heard. If the moon is anything, she’s female. So maybe that’s your typical Englishman wanting proof that he’s at the center of the universe.”

She pulled her hand away, so she could prop her head up on her elbow and turn to face Jack.

“And what does Captain Jack Sparrow see when he looks at the moon?” Suzanna asked, watching him intently.

“Well...” Jack pulled himself up to be leaning on his elbow, slouched slightly back and never taking his eyes off Suzanna as he answered the question. “Well, I’m a sailor meself, and sailors say she shows us a ship coming into harbor. A safe home, as it were. And that’s why they also say that the moon is the perfect mistress. She brings you home within her, but she travels with you wherever you go.”

Despite the coolness of the evening and the slight breeze that caressed them both, the atmosphere had never felt thicker than it did right now. It seemed the air itself was pregnant with the moonlight and the magic and that irresistible calling to the dance. They lay there drinking each other in and Jack reached out his hand. And so softly it was barely a whisper, he brought his fingertips down the side of her face and curled them over so gently under her chin to lift her mouth up to meet his.

His lips were so soft and his beard rougher, the tendrils and braids and beads falling against her face. His kiss was seduction itself—a beckoning, an invitation to dance. Her mouth said yes before her mind ever had a chance to think about it, and her tongue slipped out of its own accord to taste and explore. They moaned into each other’s mouths as Jack’s fingers reached behind her head to tangle in her hair and he pulled her body flush against his.

“Captain! Jack, are you up there? We’ve got a problem with the rudder. We need you down here now!

Jack took a long slow shaky breath. Anna Maria he could chose to ignore but not the Pearl.

“And I thought she was getting to like me,” said Suzanna with a rueful smile. Jack grinned because the regret was for the interruption and not for what they’d been doing.

“Could you...would you be very kind...” he began gesturing and then placed two fingers over her lips and his voice was very low, “Could you just hold that thought, luv, and not go anywhere just yet. I’ll be back in just a few minutes.”

Jack leaned over and breathed into her ear. “Count the stars while I’m gone and imagine each one is a kiss till I get back.” With that he brushed his lips over hers again just once, and he was gone.

By the time he reached the forward down below, flexing his fingers along the way, they were starting to itch to strangle someone. “Anna Maria, this ship had better be bloody sinking or I’m going to be forced to kill someone, and I’m happy to start with you and that dulcet voice of yours.”

She just glared at him with a look that said in a million ways “You are forgetting your priorities.”

Jack took another deep breath and spread all of his fingers in front of him in a gesture that said “never mind.”

“All right, what’s the problem?” And so began one of those things that happen on ships, like old houses, where the discovery of one problem leads to the finding of another and before you know it there are a slew of things that need fixing and it’s all a bigger bloody nuisance than you’d ever imagined. And then there was a fight and by the time Jack got back to the forward deck it was 4 o’clock in the morning and Suzanna was fast asleep, head still pillowed on his old vest. Shaking his head at how it had all unfolded, Jack scooped her up in his arms and carried her back to the cabin. He was slightly mollified by the sigh of contentment she made as she naturally put her arms around his neck and nestled into him.

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Suzanna was the first to wake up in the morning and was rather startled to find both herself and Jack dressed in their clothes from last night and lying on top of the sheets. She had a sneaking suspicion Jack was awake and just not admitting it yet. She reached over with two fingers and held them over Jack’s lips, leaning in to whisper, “Those were very long minutes, Captain.”

Eyes still closed, Jack smiled. “They were indeed. But not nearly as long as those I spent watching you sleep and not touching you. I must admit I’ve never slept with a woman before I’ve bedded her.”

Suzanna let that sink in a moment, but before she could reply, Jack turned toward her, his eyes open. “It pains me to say this, luv, but I need to be up on deck. You want to change and meet me up there and then we’ll talk. And I have a bit of a surprise for you as well.”

She raised her eyebrows. “And what surprise might that…wait a minute. The ship isn’t moving.”

“That’s right. So if you want to find out where we are, come up top. Oh, one more thing...” And with that he kissed her—a soul-searing, lip-bruising, curl-her-toes kiss that left no territory of her mouth unexplored. Then, with what she thought sounded like a slight growl, he bit her bottom lip slightly in frustration, and he was gone.